Nina Totenberg
Nina Totenberg is NPR's award-winning legal affairs correspondent. Her reports air regularly on NPR's critically acclaimed newsmagazines All Things Considered, Morning Edition, and Weekend Edition.
Totenberg's coverage of the Supreme Court and legal affairs has won her widespread recognition. She is often featured in documentaries — most recently RBG — that deal with issues before the court. As Newsweek put it, "The mainstays [of NPR] are Morning Edition and All Things Considered. But the creme de la creme is Nina Totenberg."
In 1991, her ground-breaking report about University of Oklahoma Law Professor Anita Hill's allegations of sexual harassment by Judge Clarence Thomas led the Senate Judiciary Committee to re-open Thomas's Supreme Court confirmation hearings to consider Hill's charges. NPR received the prestigious George Foster Peabody Award for its gavel-to-gavel coverage — anchored by Totenberg — of both the original hearings and the inquiry into Anita Hill's allegations, and for Totenberg's reports and exclusive interview with Hill.
That same coverage earned Totenberg additional awards, including the Long Island University George Polk Award for excellence in journalism; the Sigma Delta Chi Award from the Society of Professional Journalists for investigative reporting; the Carr Van Anda Award from the Scripps School of Journalism; and the prestigious Joan S. Barone Award for excellence in Washington-based national affairs/public policy reporting, which also acknowledged her coverage of Justice Thurgood Marshall's retirement.
Totenberg was named Broadcaster of the Year and honored with the 1998 Sol Taishoff Award for Excellence in Broadcasting from the National Press Foundation. She is the first radio journalist to receive the award. She is also the recipient of the American Judicature Society's first-ever award honoring a career body of work in the field of journalism and the law. In 1988, Totenberg won the Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Silver Baton for her coverage of Supreme Court nominations. The jurors of the award stated, "Ms. Totenberg broke the story of Judge (Douglas) Ginsburg's use of marijuana, raising issues of changing social values and credibility with careful perspective under deadline pressure."
Totenberg has been honored seven times by the American Bar Association for continued excellence in legal reporting and has received more than two dozen honorary degrees. On a lighter note, Esquire magazine twice named her one of the "Women We Love."
A frequent contributor on TV shows, she has also written for major newspapers and periodicals — among them, The New York Times Magazine, The Harvard Law Review, The Christian Science Monitor, and New York Magazine, and others.
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Immigrant rights organizations sued the state arguing that its new law conflicts with federal immigration law, and under longstanding Supreme Court precedent, states must bow to federal law in the event of such conflicts. -
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who was appointed to the court by President Biden, dissented. -
The Supreme Court has agreed to hear two cases in the fall that test state laws banning transgender women and girls from participating in sports at publicly funded institutions. -
The court closed its latest term on Friday, but it will still be working on a steady stream of emergency appeals in the coming weeks and months. -
The Supreme Court is allowing the Trump administration to take steps aimed at implementing its ban on birthright citizenship. It has also made it far more difficult to challenge executive orders. -
Conservative groups challenged the program, contending that Congress exceeded its powers in enacting legislation that delegated to the FCC the task of operating the Universal Service Fund. -
At issue is the Louisiana legislature's creation of a Black-majority congressional district, which a group of voters claimed was an illegal racial gerrymander. -
The Supreme Court releases opinion on birthright citizenship and other cases. NPR's Steve Inskeep, Carrie Johnson, and Nina Totenberg analyze the decisions.
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The ruling is the first time that the court has imposed requirements on adult consumers in order to protect minors from having access to sexually explicit material. -
At issue was whether school systems are required to provide parents with an "opt-out" option when parents claim their religious beliefs conflict with their children's course material.
